Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
cleanliness. h is notion of purity contrasts sharply with insights from the
fi elds of urban ecology in the environmental sciences and the social sci-
ences, which do not distinguish between ecologically pure human spaces
and polluted ones.
Part of this distinction between pure and polluted is evident in the lan-
guage used by Dongtan planners. One Arup planner told me simply in
describing the inspiration for Dongtan: the project was always “about the
birds.”
8
Another described Dongtan as dealing with issues of rest and unrest,
and another encapsulated it as “about harmony.”
9
h is chapter focuses on
the histories and stories of Chongming and its people, while the next chapter
focuses on the transnational architects and planners who are reshaping the
island in fundamental ways using these notions of eco-desire in their rei-
magining and development plans.
Dongtan helps me to understand my family's journey from the island
and to understand this place that my family once called home. Why and how
did Chongming become the ecological cutting edge? How are historically
degraded and culturally negative representations of rural spaces being
reworked into clean, healthy, and ecological places in the context of Shang-
hai's urban development? h ere
is
no Dongtan without fi rst understanding
how eco-desire is operationalized and imagined on Chongming Island. Put
simply, Chongming does the ecological heavy lifting for the Shanghai
region, just as Dongtan concentrates ecological virtue on the island itself
onto its eastern shore.
from brothels to birds
Chongming has always been defi ned by ecological and social change, pri-
marily in the active migration fl ows between the island and the mainland.
Radical change of a diff erent kind has rocked Chongming as it has the rest of
China in the past three decades. Most dramatically, it was transformed
in 2010 from an island accessible only through boats and ferries to one
